The router isn't very near anything. It's around 2ft above my computer and printer, which is above my computer screen.

No, not getting disconnection & reconnection. The line rate stays high, but the throughput drops dramatically.

What would cause the difference between the master and test socket? The only electronics are a resistor, a capacitor and a surge arrestor. Could one of them going bad cause the problems?

does the faceplate have any connection, ie extention wiring?
and, yes, faceplates can fail, try another

Couldn't sleep so I'm up now, but of course it won't misbehave when I want it to!

working ok at 04.15
I would guess a nearby plasma tv, or cfl light, which goes off when others go to bed

edit corrected time

Edited by ggremlin (Sat 10-Mar-12 21:22:16)

In reply to a post by ggremlin:

does the faceplate have any connection, ie extention wiring?
and, yes, faceplates can fail, try another

No, the faceplate doesn't have any extension wiring connected to it. It used to, but I've removed it for testing, and I'm using a cable the plugs into the jack instead for the time being.

In reply to a post by ggremlin:

Couldn't sleep so I'm up now, but of course it won't misbehave when I want it to!

working ok at 04.15
I would guess a nearby plasma tv, or cfl light, which goes off when others go to bed

That was my guess, but I've eliminated everything inside the house. And why would it be fine when connected to the test socket?

Another puzzling thing (to me, maybe not to you) is that it's so unpredictable. We couldn't get throughput above 350 Kbps for weeks on end (at night, and yes the connection speed was around ten times that even then), and now it seems to not be acting up at all.

I don't mind getting a new faceplate. I thought I'd ask my question here first though, in case the problem was with the electronics in the test socket.

What security have you got on the wireless of your router?

Back to your opening post, once you have got the full speed back by using the test socket, does it stay high when you reconnect using the main socket? Or have you always left it in the test socket till next day?

Although you say you don't have disconnects, have you ever checked the connection speed when things are bad? Or are you just saying you haven't noticed a disconnection? A disconnection/reconnection can take 15 seconds or sometimes even less.

Edit - had a full stop where a comma belongs.

Edited by RobertoS (Sun 11-Mar-12 23:18:19)

you can get very low throughput due to errors, for example if an unfiltered Sky box is on the line it might knock the sync down from 4M to 2M but the throughput will be awful.

So if removing the extension wires fixed it that may be why - check the error counters.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

What security have you got on the wireless of your router?

WPA2, but my connection to the router is via ethernet cable, not WiFi.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

Back to your opening post, once you have got the full speed back by using the test socket, does it stay high when you reconnect using the main socket? Or have you always left it in the test socket till next day?

I have to keep it in the test socket. Moving to the master socket again drops the throughput down again, although the connection speed is about the same (more than 3000Kbps).

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

Although you say you don't have disconnects, have you ever checked the connection speed when things are bad? Or are you just saying you haven't noticed a disconnection? A disconnection/reconnection can take 15 seconds or sometimes even less.

Yes, I've checked the connection speed when things are bad. I've done BT speed tests then, and although the connection speed is over 3000 Kbps, the throughput is a maximum of 300 Kbps (and as I said, once it was even 0, although sadly I didn't get a prize for that feat!).

There's no way on the Belkin router to tell how long it's been connected; the Netgear did tell, so I know that it wasn't disconnecting by itself.

In reply to a post by yarwell:

you can get very low throughput due to errors, for example if an unfiltered Sky box is on the line it might knock the sync down from 4M to 2M but the throughput will be awful.

How do I check error counters on my Belkin?

In reply to a post by yarwell:

So if removing the extension wires fixed it that may be why - check the error counters.

Removing the extension wires helped slightly, but I've had them removed from the master socket for weeks now for the purpose of testing.

I'm getting slightly confused now, about the timing of how you connect/connected.

I think you are saying you are now permanently using the test socket, and there is no problem?

In which case there looks to be something odd about the faceplate, which I think has no wires attached at all, which only shows up at night. Extremely wierd.

If you replace the faceplate now, does it start going wrong again? If so, get a new one.

If not, I would suspect someone has been leaching off your wireless in the evenings, possibly a visitor to the area who has now departed. Change the password on it to something complex, or disable it if you don't need it.

In the latter case, the swapping from faceplate to test socket could have broken anything streaming, and if it was unattended you would be fine until the next evening. Way-out unlikely scenario, but I await anyone else's theory . The fact that this would have caused the problem the next evening even using the test socket is there, but then we are talking about what happened historically - re the first line of this post.